Tuesday, August 30, 2016

The Chickenbone Special

A disabled father loses a son the day
after the son graduates from high school.
His son, Donnie, accepts a cash graduation gift from a sister already in New York
City and buys a ticket on the afternoon train up north. His old man wonders who’ll be
left to shave him. A church is sadden by
the loss of one of its promising young women when she decides to seek her
fortune in Baltimore. Yet, in gratitude for
her faithfulness, they pay her what she's owed and give her a bonus to help
with the transition. Another family,
with the promise of a good job and a good house in Washington DC, drives
north. Four young African-American men,
having graduated from high school, take the bus to Rochester, New York. The stories of these men and women are echoed
thousands of times over again in the 20th Century as part of the great
migration from the rural to the city. In
The Chickenbone Special, Walls
captures the story of a few of those who made journey in the late 1960s.

There were so many young African-American
youth leaving following graduation that the railroad would put on extra cars to
handle all the traffic. Most left by
train (especially those going to Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New
York). Those boarding had with them a
ticket, a few dollars, a bag of food, and a suitcase containing their
belongings. The lines running along the
East Coast, from Florida to New York, were nicknamed "Chickenbone
Specials" as many of the passengers didn't have the funds to eat in the
dining cars. A favorite in their bag of
vittles was a piece fried chicken, from which the train derived its nickname.

Wall captures the turmoil of the small
communities losing their most promising young adults, who were lured north. For some, the North became the Promised Land
as they found jobs and decent housing and were able to provide for themselves
and their families. For others, it ended
in tragedy. Problems like unplanned
pregnancies resulted in shipping back children to be cared for by grandparents. Violent deaths resulted in bodies being shipped
back. The ghettos provided new
challenges for those used to living in the country. Some who left decided life wasn't so bad in
the South and migrated back, while some of the men joined or were drafted into
the military.

Walls' story is told against the backdrop
of change in agriculture. Wall's
research was conducted in two areas (Kingstree SC and Warren County NC), where
tobacco and cotton were the chief products.
With new machinery, it was taking fewer hands to harvest the crops. Small farms with a minuscule tobacco
allotment struggled to survive. However,
for those without the resources to buy the ticket as soon as school let out, they
could stick around for the summer and pick up enough work in tobacco fields to
earn their fare north after the harvest.

Wall also captures a glimpse into the
networks that supported those migrating.
In the South, the church and the family provided stability for the
community. Often, those heading north
had a relative who had paved the way beforehand. These relatives would meet the new resident
at the train or bus station and give them shelter while they looked for a
job. He told the story of how the
African-American community grew in the Rochester area, starting with a clergy
grower who early in the 20th Century recruited migrant workers from
Florida to work in his fields in the north.
Overtime, many of the migrants stayed and the community grew to be quite
sizable.

I recommend this book for anyone
interested in African-American migration and the rural to urban flight. However, it is not a sociological study. Walls is a journalist and has collected
stories which help the reader get a sense for the time. For those of us who are not African-American,
this book along with Melton McLaurin’s Separate Paths: Growing Up White in the Segregated South provide insight into rural
South of the mid-20th Century.
Another recommendation, which focused on the rural poor white of the
time, (which included many white families) at the time tenant farming was
waning is Linda Flowers, Throwed Away:
Failures of Progress in Eastern North Carolina.

Dwayne Walls was a reporter for the Charlotte Observer. I learned of this book (which is long
out-of-print and I picked up a used former library copy) from Phil Morgan. Phil was a photographer at the Observer, who worked with Walls on this
story. One of Phil’s photographs (of an
African-American family waiting on the train) is on the dust cover of the
book.

19 comments:

Earlier in the year, I read a novel along these lines - though it took place in the first part of the century. The term 'Chickenbone Special' was not used, but it did note that those traveling brought their meals rather than using a dining car.

Musings

This blog contains observations on life and nature written by Sage, satire and parody written by Nevada Jack, and an occasional book review or poem. As a general rule, the author of the blog doesn't write about his work or his family. Email at sagecoveredhills [at] gmail.com